Then he rode under the suspended man, and rejoined the Indian.
The two went down the canyon together.
CHAPTER III.
The hands which had pushed the stone over the edge of the wall were small and beautiful. They belonged to a young girl who might have reached her seventeenth year. She was of medium height, rather slightly built, with a fair, fresh skin, and sparkling black eyes. At a goodly distance she might have been taken for a member of the opposite sex, for the garment that reached but a little way below the knees was fringed after the manner of the frontier hunting-frock. Her petite feet were incased in a pair of Indian moccasins; and her leggins of pliable goods, reached to the strings of these picturesque shoes.
On the whole, the girl on the cliffs formed a romantic piece of living statuary in the moonlight that fell unobstructed about her.
If she was armed, her person bore no evidences of it. The weapon which she had just hurled at Tom Terror was one which could not be borne by such slender arms as hers.
She had not witnessed the Tiger’s manner of dealing with old Jack the stage-driver. There were many shadows between her and the exciting drama going on below, but the voices came up to her, clear and distinct, without a syllable missing, and she heard Jack’s shriek and the shots of the scarlet Thugs.
“The white Thug and his creatures are down there,” fell in angry and vengeful accents from her tongue. “They have added another human being to their catalogue of victims, and he, Old Jack, the man who once looked at me till I felt my heart beat in my bosom like a bird beats herself against the sides of the cage. Oh, if I had a weapon here. I see the white Thug. I—can’t I send a death missile down among them?”
As the beautiful speaker started from the edge of the cliff with flashing eyes, her heel came in contact with a stone which moved so she was almost thrown over it.